based on your description what i have is a reed switch, it did take a little debouncing to get it stable enough, but hey it didn't cost me nothing to do a little extra coding.
Now I can be a little OCD sometimes, especially with my work, so no matter how many times I say I am going to let something go, I don't. I have been known to stay awake for days pondering solutions and take my work to the bar, working out details of a project between pool games and shots! That being said I was just reading an article about generating useful feed back from servo motors and it was confusing the heck out of me. Out of nowhere like some kind of great TV detective or doctor, something (and I cant even figure out what it was) sent my thoughts down this ridiculous chain of unrelated concepts and Ta-Da I figured it out.
I was looking at things completely the wrong way and that's why i couldn't understand the concepts. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head that the sensors would be evenly and symmetrically spaced around the shaft, but one of them needs to be a little further away from the other so that the two rows of detents on my wheel that are offset 50% can be properly utilized. Now I hook the first sensor to an interrupt and that interupt immediatly poles the other sensor and the direction of movement will determine if that sensor reads high or low.
I probably just explained something that most of you already knew, some of you may even be thinking "DUH, I assumed you knew where to put the sensors" but whatever. I was able to get where I needed to be thanks to all of you. If you can find me, I'll buy you a beer!